Google to take legal action in Turkey over YouTube ban

Google has filed a formal protest with the Turkish courts over the recent YouTube ban. The ban had been lifted Saturday by a lesser court, but the decision was reversed until "criminal content" — recordings of a state security meeting about Syria — are removed.

Google's attorney Gönenç Gürkaynak, filed the complaint on behalf of YouTube saying that the service had been blocked by the Turkish Telecommunications Authority without a valid court decision. A recent case, also with Gürkaynak as the attorney for the plaintiff, about the Twitter banning was found to be in favor of Twitter and the block was reversed. We'll have to wait and see if the results here are similar.

Reader comments

Google to take legal action in Turkey over YouTube ban

The perks of being a multi-national company of having many representatives of many countries to defend yourself in the court of law.
And then you have your curses like this YouTube ban situation.
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But countries have laws and if they bypassed their own law then Google has a case. Don't forget that Google is a multinational corporation. If the US suddenly banned YouTube then Google would bring suit against the federal government here, too.

This. I couldn't agree more. I'm increasingly seeming Google as the evil 500lbs gorilla in the room. It's like the almighty Google just assumes they have the God given right to mine the worlds data and sell the world ads.....

Did they take my approval?
As being a Turkish citizen, I can say, no one here is happy with this event...
Except for evil phorm-partner mainstream ISP company which now needs to provide less bandwidth...

I don't get it. Google wants to sue a country for banning Youtube <------revenue maker, but won't help it's OEM's that use Android <------revenue maker, from an evil masochistic dictatorship known as Apple from being sued that use/uses/or used Android core functionality. SMH.

Just to make everything clear.
Google saw something on software that they liked, found a way to implement it, and have it away for FREE. (GOOGLE NOT BREAKING THE LAW) (Apple can't sue Google because Google isn't making money off of it.)
OEMs that make money off what Google saw and implemented, seem to be liable for receiving stolen property.
Moral of the story: don't make more money on things than the supposed owner of the things, even though you got the things for free.

By your comment, I can go "copy" an app line for line and as long as I give it away, it's legal.

Google like it and implemented the alleged infringed patents in Android. Of coarse all the OEM's included it as they were part of Android. Google removed the features from android and so did all the other OEM's including Samsung and HTC. But just because Samsung "sold" it's product, Apple is suing. Apple even said they might go after other OEM's for this infringement.

So what are the OEM's to do? Pick and choose what "might" be patented by other manufacturers and remove them? Google would be PISSED! If that's the case, Android wouldn't be used at all.

All I'm saying is that Google put this in Android and OEM's used it of coarse. Now they are getting sued for patent infringement. Google should step in.

If Google were to somehow decompile Apple's code and copy it "line for line" that would be illegal under *copyright* law (which is where I want all this software crap to stay, but I digress) not patent law.

If, on the other hand, Google wrote their own code that created a similar effect, that is an entirely different issue. This is what's happened, and the whole conversation is because of the way software is being patented. The big question is whether or not software *should* be patented. I keep asking people "would you patent a book?" Or a musical score? Or a painting? Ultimately, software development is not so different from these things. All of these are covered under copyright (as they should be). Software patents are, inherently, a patent on a concept. As for Google "stepping in", they have done things to try and help the situation, but there are probably legal limits to how much they can get directly involved in the court case itself.

Google has acquired patents and licensed them to OEM's and are actively campaigning for a review of the patent situation in the US. Notice that Apple has lost these same court cases in every other country.

As a software developer myself, I hope they're successful. These software patents have gotten ridiculous.

Your picture says slap stupid people.... You need a slappin' boy. Google has no role in the Apple vs (OEM) . Because thoes suits are over hardware. Also YouTube is Google itself, while Android OEMs are their own independent entities.
Need we continue?

What's funny is that those functions were in the OG nexus phone and tablets. Samsung used them only up until Google dropped them. I think it was the S3 that used the patents in question last. So Apple is crying...."they used our stuff"...snif....

The reason Apple is suing Samsung and not Google is that their argument is that "Samsung" having those features on their devices cost them sales, so they want part of Samsung's sales dollars. If they made that same argument against Google, well, 10% of $0 is $0. This is an attempt at a money grab by Apple, in an attempt to "hurt" competitors. Nothing more.

I'm *much* more interested in the outcome of *this* supreme court case right now than I am the Apple v Samsung, round 2:

Google had informed Samsung that the steps they were taking was going to lead them to getting sued by Apple and Samsung choose not to listen so they are facing the wrath of Apple believe me I bet you that Google would have been all up in that ass if Apple had been attacking Samsung for no reason.

Not exactly. More like ICANN will no longer be controlled by any one country. One of the few things Obama's said that I actually agree with. If anything, this whole thing with Turkey has really gone a long way to show that you *can't* prevent people from getting to the internet. The internet is bigger than any one country.

The internet is on of *the* most important inventions in the history of humanity, IMO.

Imagine back just 100 years ago. That's really nothing in the greater scheme of history, but 100 years ago trying to send a letter to someone 200 miles away could take days. Or you could send a telegram, which cost lots of money so you had to carefully craft your messages to be as inexpensive as possible. You would rarely get news about things going on just two towns away.

Today, we get news from around the world within minutes. You and I could be anywhere in the world and still have instant communication. We could even video chat with someone on the other side of the planet.

This level of open communication has unlimited potential for the "evolution" of humanity. It's an exciting time to be alive.

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